Brazilian First
Lady Battles Poverty, Supports Youth in Her Native
Country

By D. Lyn Hunter,
Public Affairs
Posted March 1, 2000

Ruth Cardoso isn't all that comfortable with the title
"First Lady of Brazil." In Latin America, she says, the
wives of presidents are traditionally called by their own
names. But the American ideal of "the first lady" is slowly
influencing Latin culture, said Cardoso.

"The expectations of the first lady in Brazil are much
different than in America," she said. "For me the role is
much more flexible. There is no one idea or set of criteria
for what I have to be."

Which is a good thing, since Cardoso, a visiting scholar
at Berkeley, wears many hats in her native country --
professor, scholar, policymaker and social activist. She
helped create the Conselho da Comunidade Solidária, a
community service council that works to alleviate such
problems as illiteracy, hunger and poverty.

Imagine Hillary Clinton trying to pull that off. Her
attempts to organize health care reform during the
president's first term were lambasted by citizens and
politicians alike. She has kept pretty quiet since then.

"It's a pity how things worked out for her," said
Cardoso. "I agree with her issues, and I think she could
have played an important role in health care reform. I
learned a lot from her experiences."

Born in Araraguara, São Paulo, in 1930, Cardoso
said she was expected by her family to go to college, not a
normal route for most women of her generation. While
studying at the University of São Paulo, she met her
husband, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and they married in
1953. Both became academicians, she an anthropologist
focusing on political participation and youth in Latin
America. He went on to become president in 1995.

During her month-long stay in Berkeley, a guest of the
Center for Latin American Studies, Cardoso is teaching a
class, giving public lectures and participating in a
conference on Brazilian issues.

When asked to compare Brazil to the United States,
Cardoso pointed out the dramatic cultural differences
between the many regions in her native country. "Here, the
different parts of the country seem more or less the
same."

But the two countries share many of the same social
issues, she said, such as health care, the environment and
education.

But one of the greatest challenges for Brazil is it's
crippling poverty, said Cardoso. According to the Brazilian
census bureau, 35 percent of children between the ages of 7
and 14 live in poverty.

"Brazil is a rich country," she said. "But at the same
time we have widely disparate income levels."

This chasm is part of the reason Cardoso created Conselho
da Comunidade Solidária. The program brings together
government, civil society, universities and businesses in an
effort to organize communities and improve the living
conditions of Brazil's poorest.

Cardoso talks more about her work and the challenges
Brazil faces in the accompanying Q&A with Fabrizio
Rigout.

Q & A WITH RUTH CARDOSO

Q:

What are the main themes you will cover in your
course at the Center for Latin American Studies
this semester?

A:

This course will be an opportunity to discuss
the youth question in Brazil and Latin America as a
whole. I propose the examination of aspects such as
the demographic situation in our countries, that
is, the pressures on the labor market and on
educational institutions. There exist analyses that
correlate the size of the young population and
moments of rebellion, such as 1968 and other
moments of youth activism. I'd like to begin a
discussion of the conditions under which this
activism appears. For that it is necessary to
aggregate other analytic perspectives that include
the socioeconomic situation of this segment, the
variety of living conditions in our country,
limitations and opportunities that are not equally
distributed among youth. It is also necessary to
include the cultural perspective. The main feature
of young people in the contemporary world is their
capacity to create and consume a culture of their
own.

Q:

One of the founding principles of the Conselho
da Comunidade Solidária, the community
service council you helped organize, is the
diffusion of citizenship, encouraging the
participation of poor people in the advocacy of
their rights, and also helping them intervene
directly to better their living conditions. How
much resistance has the program encountered in
trying to break with the tradition of
assistance-based policies in the fight against
poverty? What is the recipe for creating lasting
programs that continue to be run democratically at
the local level?

A:

Indeed the Conselho da Comunidade
Solidária has as its main objective
promoting participation and the development of
communities. We are trying to achieve results by
means of programs especially tailored to these
objectives. Since we regularly evaluate the
performance of the programs we sponsor, I can
affirm that we were able to organize the
communities and support local leadership.

Resistance to this type of work was once
stronger. Today we have conquered legitimacy
because of the results achieved, and because of the
partnerships we established with several actors
who, on local and national levels, support our
initiatives.

Aid-based policies had already been subject to
much criticism in Brazilian society, and the
institutions that supported them are no longer
legitimate. For that reason, one of the first acts
of this administration was to close down LBA
[Brazilian Assistance Legion], a prototype
of social assistance whose policy guidelines were
marked by very little objectivity. Its extinction
did not elicit significant reaction: society
expected it.

Q:

In rural areas and small townships in the
countryside of Brazil, one would expect local power
to oppose community mobilization. Would you say
that the tradition of participation is weak in
those areas? What have been the challenges and
achievements of Comunidade Solidária's
programs in the backlands?

A:

The challenges we face in the rural areas are
not so different as those of the urban areas.
Municipal governments are strong because of the
power of local politicians, but they also face, in
different degrees, communities in which
mobilization has occurred (such as the spreading
grassroots associations), and many embrace them.
One must remember that these municipalities are
very poor and that any program that treats them
with dignity instead of arrogance will find
support. When they realize that the criteria for
selection and implementation of a program are
objective rather than political, legitimacy and
cooperation are guaranteed.

Q:

Urban violence affects especially the poorer
population residing the outskirts of Brazilian
metropoles, where infrastructure is precarious,
recreational possibilities restricted, and where
organized crime, particularly drug trafficking, has
the upper hand. In the case of these communities,
the state, be it in its role as executor of social
policy, be it as a guarantor of public order, is
oftentimes absent. For the people living in these
areas, "citizenship" is quite an abstract concept.
Do you agree with this portrait of the way poor
urban dwellers see the state in Brazil? To what
extent can the organization of these communities
break the structure of oppression without the state
also taking the initiative of changing its
posture?

A:

I take urban violence to be one of the main
problems of our country and of many other countries
as well. Whereas well-known social problems such as
education, health, housing, etc., benefit from a
large stock of intellectual reflection and many
proposals for their solution, the action against
violence is still a challenge. A complex and
multifaceted phenomenon does not admit simple
solutions. I agree that the absence of police
control or its abuse are fundamental causes of the
dissemination of violence. Moreover, this results
from a long period of authoritarianism and from the
posture of a society that, in the face of violence,
requires even more penalization and toughness
towards those whom it considers criminals. The
state's task is to impose more control over police,
but it is up to society to disseminate a less
bellicose, more tolerant vision.

There is no doubt that the expansion of drug
trafficking had an active role in the increase of
violence, and that it must be repressed; however,
we all know how difficult and ineffective this has
been. In Brazil, the federal government created a
new institution for the repression of drug-related
crime working in coordination with the Federal
Police, which also underwent changes. But this is a
long-term task that may begin with gun control, a
proposal that is met with much resistance in civil
society. I hope the proposed gun control law
currently debated in Congress is approved so we may
see a reduction in violent offenses. But even this
first step, albeit extremely important, is hard to
take. And the risk of indiscriminate use of weapons
affects especially the poorest strata, as you
stated.

I believe that the institutions entrusted with
the control of violence (police, judiciary, etc.)
are failing or functioning erratically, which
leaves all social classes devoid of protection,
since violent acts affect all. Impunity and the
expansion of illegal activities affect all of
society. A joint action between government and
society can impact this situation, which must be
fought urgently.

The improvement of public policy and the
betterment of living conditions among the poor is
imperative so that Brazil may develop, but it won't
have immediate effect on the statistics of violence
because one cannot, and should not, establish
mechanical relations between poverty and violence.
If poverty actually caused violence, we would have
had higher rates of violence in the past. Blaming
the poor for illegal acts, from my point of view,
is a violence against them. If some join criminal
networks, thousands of others fight for a decent
life and do not want to be taken for bandits. The
uncontrolled expansion of cities, the precarious
conditions of living are realities that cannot be
ignored and must be transformed so that those who
are now excluded may have access to the benefits to
which they are entitled for their work.

To what extent is the organization of local
communities able to break through this situation?
This is a hard question because it points to a
process rather than to a univocal relation. Some
conditions are necessary for the organization of
communities and they are increasingly present in
the country, as a result of the actions of
nongovernmental organizations, the churches, and
public institutions that created popular councils
and other forms of participation. Nonetheless,
whereas this communitarianism is an important
weapon for claiming better living conditions, it
has limited power to control violence because its
enemy is hidden behind illegality. To achieve this
objective, without a doubt we need a partnership
between state and society, in a convergence of
actions. Each one has its task and cannot shy away
from it, because the disruptive power of violence
threatens us all.

Q:

Brazilian youth bear the burden of the new
competitive social order in Brazil, in which
schooling is a prerequisite to obtaining quality
jobs. The country is undergoing educational reform
and evaluation of school performance across the
board, trying to improve the public schooling
system, which suffered from serious lack of
investment in the past, especially during the
authoritarian period. What are, in your opinion,
the public policies that affect most directly the
Brazilian youth today?

A:

For the reasons indicated in the question, I
consider the most important public policies aimed
at the Brazilian youth to be those that offer them
training and new skills. I include among them
governmental and non-governmental policies, but all
of them policies that offer from minimal skills
such as literacy (which many lack) to computer
skills (there are several initiatives in this area,
by the way). These initiatives are numerous, but
still insufficient. The programs for educational
acceleration [aimed at students that fall
behind or return to school at an older age],
carried out primarily by the governments but also
by the third sector (non-profits) are examples of
youth-targeted programs that cater to the needs of
the majority. Obviously young people also need
programs in the areas of health, culture, sports,
work. Some of these policies already exist, some
must be modified, and others must be created with
the help of youth themselves.

Q:

You taught at Berkeley in the early 80s for a
semester. What memories do you have of those
days?

A:

My recollections of the time I spent at Berkeley
are excellent, and I am very happy to have had the
opportunity to return. The university welcomed me
warmly, and I left behind good friends I hope to
see again. It was great to teach Latin American
themes having to adapt the bibliography to an
English-speaking readership; I learned a lot, and I
hope to learn more this time, from my colleagues,
students, and friends.

Q:

What lessons have you learned from your
experience as wife of a head of state?

A:

I wouldn't say I have learned lessons while
living the role of wife of a head of state. I'd say
I have been living new and unforeseen experiences,
but these are fleeting. Rather, the opportunity to
put into practice some ideas emanating from my
previous research, and which already had a
political aspect to them, is what this rich
learning process has been about. All new and
unexpected situations are difficult, but are
opportunities for renewal as well.